Executioner-in-Chief, Princess, and Abstruse Poor Clares – Folha de S. Paulo, August 12, 1973
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Today, I would like to share some encouraging and invigorating news with my readers.
The first piece of news concerns the state of public opinion in America.
According to telegraphic dispatches, American public opinion seems to have welcomed Brezhnev’s visit with naive sympathy. Such an attitude, if real, would pose serious threats to America and the world. It would reveal an alarming deterioration in American public opinion, a kind of masochistic schizophrenia.
In fact, in the case of Vietnam, national sentimentality helped contain the war and force the retreat of American power, on the grounds that it was necessary above all to spare human lives, whether friends or enemies.
Strictly speaking, this philanthropic policy should have led Americans to a decisive and militant condemnation of the tyranny and crimes that fester beyond the Iron Curtain. There is no reason why Yankee sentimentality should condone the bloodshed in Vietnam while failing to condemn the bloodshed the Reds are perpetrating beyond the Iron Curtain.
The American people’s seemingly indifferent yet friendly welcome of Brezhnev reveals an implicit coldness, a disconcerting indifference to the fate of the unfortunate victims he is the chief executioner of.
So much for the contradictory nature of the American reaction. Let us now examine its masochistic character.
In both cases, sentimentality harmed American interests and favored those of communism.
In Vietnam’s case, a philanthropic mentality breathed life into the policy of retreat and surrender. In Russia’s case, it also seemed to favor a policy of surrender and retreat in the face of the red menace.
The worldwide repercussions of this could not have been more unfavorable. For witnessing the American people’s applause for the self-destruction of the secular anticommunist superpower, anticommunists around the world could wonder what hopes of success remained.
This is all the more so because the dramatic American hara-kiri is unfolding precisely at a time when anticommunists, bewildered, watch the Church, the spiritual superpower, undergo a mysterious process of self-destruction. It would take a great deal of faith to continue the fight: the faith that moves mountains. But few possess such faith.
Now, I read in the July 19 issue of The Red Line magazine the highly encouraging news that a Gallup poll shows only 34% of the American public supported Russia’s agreements with the United States, while 57% opposed them, and the rest were undecided. This poll, conducted shortly after Brezhnev’s visit, implicitly revealed the coldness and resistance of a robust majority toward the visit.
In other words, most Americans’ state of mind is healthy and coherent, offering hope that Nixon will ultimately be compelled to change course.
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Surprising as it may seem, I read another encouraging article in the Krakow newspaper, Tygodnik Powszechny.
In Syria, the Council of State enacted a 1967 law nationalizing private religious schools, most of which were Catholic. The reaction among Catholic families was swift. So many emigrated to Lebanon to ensure their children received a Catholic education that the Council of State repealed the law, a clear demonstration of the strength and consistency of Catholic opinion.
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In contrast to this encouraging news, there is no shortage of depressing news items. Among these, I highlight one published by the same Polish newspaper. Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth, recently visited the Port of Massova in Ethiopia. She visited a Soviet ship anchored there. The princess and the communist sailors took the opportunity to eat caviar and drink champagne together.
Of course, such culinary luxury is not customary on ships in a country ravaged by hunger, such as Russia. It was adopted by the communist ship only to receive the gracious princess with court honors. She reciprocated the kindness by adopting communist manners, that is, eating not in the company of the officers, as would be normal, but with the sailors, thus affirming unclouded sympathy for the representatives of the most revolutionary regime.
Given the visits already exchanged between the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and the Tito couple, and the planned visits by British royals to Soviet Russia, it is clear that even the British Crown—one of the highest cultural and symbolic institutions still remaining in the West—is becoming engaged in the process of self-demolition into which Nixon has plunged the entire free world.
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None of this, however, is as troubling as the news reported by Puebla, a widely circulated union newspaper published across Spain.
The newspaper reports that the Spanish Acrylic Fiber Society (SEAF), seeking to provide the public with beautifully finished bikinis, set out to find highly skilled labor. Brace yourself, reader, lest you fall off your chair! Unable to find it in the usual places, they hired a team of nuns from one of the Church’s most austere religious orders to take on that task: the Poor Clares, spiritual daughters of the most pure, austere, and mystical Saint Clare, sister of the poverello of Assisi. Under their rule, these nuns must observe perpetual cloister and rigorous penance. To support themselves, they cannot own property but must rely solely on alms and the fruits of their labor.
Given their highly skilled seamstress work, eight Poor Clares from the convent of Benavente, Spain, agreed to work for the above-mentioned company. For 50,000 pesetas, they produced 92 different models of brightly colored bikinis.
I will refrain from commenting. Silent and dismayed, I wait for some Brazilian Poor Clare to enable me to prove that the newspaper “Puebla” lied. I will publish this evidence with eager joy.
